By Joe Survant
The Stone
“The Stone: New and Selected Poems from Asia, is another gift from Joe Survant’s treasury. “The Jungle Letter To My Wife” begins colloquially enough – “There was something I wanted to say,”. In the next stanza, a “strangler fig” appears (like Chekhov’s Act I pistol) / whose slow aerial life / brings down the greatest tree.” The pistol shot arrives 3 lines later: “the terrible secret / hummed unheard / within you, a seed / some wayward bird / dropped carelessly / in the warm bark high / up your body’s tree.” Survant’s effortless, skillful joinery in this poem previews what’s evident in every poem. No jungle splendor exists without terrors. Risk is the price of rapture. Survant reveals the journey, laid (like Snyder’s Rip Rap), word by word, guiding us towards deep feeling and wisdom. I urge you to read this book.” – Peter Coyote, author, actor, Zen Buddhist Priest
By Joe Survant
View from the Stork Building:
Chinese Variations
By Joe Survant
The Land We Dreamed: Poems
University Press of Kentucky
By Joe Survant
Rafting Rise
University Press of Florida
By Joe Survant
The Presence of Snow in the Tropics
Singapore, Landmark Books.
Out of Print
By Joe Survant
Anne & Alpheus 1842-1882
University of Arkansas Press
(Arkansas Poetry Prize)
